Virtual
Classroom Is Expected to Save 1.6 Million Taxpayer DollarsTraining personnel on one or two new acquisition
procedures is relatively easy. Communicating 125 critical acquisition
messages to audiences all around the world, in a timely manner,
is a challenge. So it's not difficult to feel the synergism of the
Lightening Bolt # 9 Virtual Classroom Integrated Product Team, a
group of creative U.S. Air Force employees, who accepted this challenge,
and by doing so expect to save the Federal Government 1.6 million
dollars over the next year. The team also won Vice President Gore's
Hammer Award for their achievement.

Technology Means a New, More Secure PassportWe know. You don't like your picture on your driver's
license or your passport. However, good or bad picture, here's a
passport picture that can't be altered by thieves and thugs. The
State Department has introduced a new U.S. passport featuring a
digitized photograph and data page. The new passport also contains
a number of anti-counterfeiting features in the data page, including
security film with a multi-colored multiple diffraction-grating
image, similar to a hologram, to protect both the digital photo
and the personal data. Microline printing (in the form of wavy lines)
is being added behind the photograph to serve as another deterrent
to counterfeiting. Production of the existing version of the passport
will be phased out gradually. By late 1999, all domestic passport
agencies will be equipped to produce the new passport.

Federal
Computer Week:
Visiting Naval Observatory Page Is Time Well Spent"To synchronize your watch to 'official' U.S. time,
visit the home page of the Time Service Department at the U.S. Naval
Observatory in Washington, D.C., said Federal Computer Week's Bob
Brewin. "The utilitarian home page offers the current time, but
click through to the pages within, and you will enter a World Wide
Web site that delights with facts about the inexorable ticking of
the clocks that too often rule people's lives."
Thanks to a Battery-Operated Insulin Pump with Computer Chips, Oklahoma
Pilot Can Fly AgainAfter
learning the "great news" that Federal Aviation Administration approval
of a new diabetic pilot rule was imminent, Michael Bilcik from Yukon,
OK, dusted off his flying skills with a flight instructor. Bilcik
wears an insulin pump. The device has a reservoir filled with insulin,
a small battery-operated pump, and computer chips that allow him
to control exactly how much insulin the pump delivers. It's all
contained in a plastic case about the size of a pager.

Better Than the Lottery:
How to Find Your Lost Pension"No one told me I had a pension. I am glad to know
that there is a government agency like the Pension Benefit Guaranty
Corporation that took the time to look for me and give me my pension."
This was the reaction of Ms. Carol Carson, Atlanta, GA., to the
news that PBGC was holding a pension for her from her former employer
in New York.